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Turning to hitters: SAM BOWENS was also a 1964 rookie flash with his 22 homers and .263/.323/.453/.776, 114 OPS+. I rooted loyally for him during his remaining seasons, during which he barely batted above .200 only once: .210 on the '66 team.

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Y'all forgotten Jim Hardin! 18-13, 2.51 ERA at age 24 for the '68 O's, his second ML season. Never won more than 6 after that.

And 1964 RoY Wally Bunker: 19-5, 2.69 ERA.

Both were plagued by sore arms.

If not for the ridiculously high attrition rate among pitchers they would have to change the rules. If 90% of pitchers got through their careers healthy the league ERA would be a run or run-and-a-half lower. The strike zone would have to go back to the belt, or they'd have to juice the ball.

Although I think Wally Bunker wasn't destined for a long and successful career in any case. His 19-5, 2.69 season came with four K/9. Even in '64 that was only 2/3rds of league average. Almost no one is successful starting out striking out 2/3rds of average. His BABIP was .216. Completely, utterly unsustainable. The same year Koufax had a BABIP 30 points higher.

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Worthington was the 1988 IL MVP. He hit .244/.303/.419 with 16 homers and 73 RBI. That was a pitcher's league, but that has to be one of the weakest MVP lines I've ever seen. He was 32nd in the league in OPS. The voters must have thought he was Brooks with the glove.

It was a little like Mountcastle's MVP where he wasn't nearly the best player in AAA. He just was the (one of the) best real prospect(s) who wasn't called up after a couple hundred ABs.

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I'll add Dave Johnson from 1989-90 to the mix. Even if Johnson was slightly below average going by ERA+, he was miles better in that 1.5 year stretch, than the rest of his career when he was absolutely hammered. Plus, I always admired how he gutted out an emergency start against the Blue Jays the final weekend of 1989 season after Pete Harnisch got scratched because he stepped on a nail.

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I'll add Dave Johnson from 1989-90 to the mix. Even if Johnson was slightly below average going by ERA+, he was miles better in that 1.5 year stretch, than the rest of his career when he was absolutely hammered. Plus, I always admired how he gutted out an emergency start against the Blue Jays the final weekend of 1989 season after Pete Harnisch got scratched because he stepped on a nail.

“Billy Ripken told me a story once,” Johnson said, "we were playing the Athletics, the next year, and Dave Henderson was on first base and they were making a pitching change. Billy was wandering over to talk to Dave. He goes to Billy, ‘Hey, who’s pitching tomorrow?’

“Magic,” Billy said.

“Who?”

“Magic Johnson.”

“Who the hell is Magic Johnson?” said Dave Henderson. “What does he got?”

Then Billy said: “The catcher throws down a bunch of fingers, but it all looks the same."

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Johnson used those low expectations as fuel, never hiding from his limitations. He still doesn’t.

“That was my driving force. I needed that. If I didn’t have that, I couldn’t compete at that level,” Johnson said. “At the end of the next year, I remember sitting back in my lounge chair and saying, ‘I made it.’ And I went right in the toilet from there. I lost that edge. My stuff wasn’t good enough. But my stuff combined with ‘I’m coming at ya, this is everything I’ve got, and I’m going to prove to you that I could do this,’ even though deep down inside, I wasn’t sure I could.”

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“A lot of people would look at it in a negative way, like, ‘That guy wasn’t very good.' I know I wasn’t!” Johnson said. “But I pitched parts of five years in the big leagues and you don’t do that by luck. I played 12 years professionally. I did some things that a lot of guys who were a lot more talented than I was didn’t do. I take pride in that. I wear it as a badge of honor, knowing he wasn’t very good, but he did some things he wasn’t supposed to do.”

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What about Rich Coggins in '73? He hit .319 with an .831 OPS, worth nearly 4 WAR, had a disappointing sophomore season for the Birds (0.2 WAR), bounced around three teams and was out of baseball by '77.

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I'll add Dave Johnson from 1989-90 to the mix. Even if Johnson was slightly below average going by ERA+, he was miles better in that 1.5 year stretch, than the rest of his career when he was absolutely hammered. Plus, I always admired how he gutted out an emergency start against the Blue Jays the final weekend of 1989 season after Pete Harnisch got scratched because he stepped on a nail.

Dave Johnson was just good enough at exactly the right moment in '89. People say Pete Rose got more out of his talent than anyone else. But Johnson threw about 83 mph. He had nothin'. If a 29-year old version of Johnson showed up to Orioles spring training this year you'd check Elias' sanity. He had 26 strikeouts in 89 innings. And he started the most important game of the 1989 Major League season and almost won the thing.

Excepting the most extreme situations, which this is not, someone should not be penalized for expressing an opinion. In this case he didn’t even express an opinion, he merely agreed with someone else’s. I don’t know what it was and I don’t care. I usually don’t have a problem with atomic, but I take strong exception to his position, and I lament that there are many people who agree with him.
People must have the freedom to express themselves. Drew Brees did not say anything wrong. He has nothing to apologize for. Kapernick doesn’t have a need to apologize either. Reactions to expressing of opinions are so rapidly over the top that soon no one will express any opinions at all except those who loudest and most extreme.
Akin Did not do anything wrong, he didn’t do anything for which he needs to apologize, And people really need to look very closely at what they are advocating.